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A beautiful timeline of educational gadgets reminds us that the Scantron machine was really awesome

Over the weekend, the New York Times published a timeline of photographs of technological advances in the classroom. While the blackboard and the horn-book (a wooden paddle printed with the alphabet) look like artifacts that might be leftover from when dinosaurs walked the earth, the ones that are a bit newer are quite interesting to behold. For instance, you may or may not be old enough to remember the blue-inked glory of a mimeograph machine (the oldest example dating from around 1940 is above), or the awesomeness of a Scantron machine which automatically graded multiple choice tests. Seriously, we can't tell you how many hundreds of Scantron forms we filled out in our time as students, but it was unfortunately more than none. Hit up the source link to see all of the glorious gadgets throughout the years, but be forewarned: the last one is an iPad.